weird thing of the day!


today we were sitting in the office and we were about to get ready for that really big class (see below) and one of the teachers said not to go.
you like pig?
yeah...?
you get pork now. it is a gift, maybe.
ok...
4min. later, a guy walks down the hall dragging a big bag (waist high and barely hugable). then he pulls out 15 big black bags and hands to to us. inside... PORK! fresh pork. skin and all. i mean we are talking about 15lbs of pork!! so we go to put it in the fridge and you guessed it. we got one of the lucky bags!!! we got one of the ears!

seriously, it is just another day of our life in china!



later,
Joe

Hello everyone!!!


about St. Paul, that is not quite what i said. i said, "you never know where you are." Teaching is a lot of fun but we have this new thing. it is called an english corner. any student who wishes can come talk with us and practice their english. our first day we had over 150 kids. try teaching a class outside to 150 kids with some coming and going all the time. it was crazy!!! we taught them take me out to the ball game. it was great! but i never imagined that i could be so tired or that my throat could hurt so bad.

i just have to take a second to say hi to all the larkin hoffman people. the teachers here are awesome to work with, but you all were the best.


take care,
Joe or gao jian

And the winner is...

We have decided that every couple of months we will award one food with the "We miss it the most" award.
The award this month goes to.... drum roll please.............."cheese" Yes you all have it in your fridge in in America, its yellow, white sometimes , makes great grilled sandwiches, or juicy lucys, it can even cross cultural barriers and be put on nachos!! The Europeans knew what they were doing, the great mr. Cheese. Oh how we miss him. It's ok mr cheese our love affair will continue next July, Until then Au revoir, Kiss* Kiss* Enjoy your award!

Best american find in china: peanut butter that is mixed with chocolate. kinda like Nutella and peanutbutter combined. Someone let me know if this is sold in the US otherwise I will bring some home for all to try!

Joe's Monday quote of the day.
"Living in China, is like living in St.Paul. You never know what anybodies talking about or where you are. Hmmm " (this was said with a look of all seriousness, like he was pondering really hard about it and rubbing his chin)

A man walks in the desert for 7 days, he turns around and finds no footprints, How can this be?

This weekend we traveled into Yueyang and visited some of our foreign friends. We ate out, toured there schools and even went to a couple of clubs. The first club was fun, We sat down and played a game that seems to be at everybar ( its a cup with dice in it, each person has to guess how many numbers everyone else has) After a few rounds we turned around and in walks about 10 other foreigners. Weird. Our organiztion always told us if you want to find the foreigners they will be at the bars. Now we believe them. We met 1 guy from the Netherlands and the other from Germany. They worked at a factory doing some sort of exchange program. Not sure what that means.
The next bar we went to was a little crazy. Strobe lights everywhere, and laser beams going crazy. There were stages with girls dancing on them too. It was a little weird I have to say.
Espiecially when all the lights went flashy and I decided that I was glad I wasn't epileptic. We left shortly after the flashy lights deciding our eyes couldnt take it.
It was a fun time and we ended up staying at another friends apartment in Yueyang.
It was defiently nice to just hang out with americans and find out what all they were going through. We even found out that one friend is now dating a guy in our organization! So now we are not the only couple!
Today we were invited to our chinese friend amanda's home for lunch. Her father made dumplings, Wan Zi, ( a pork rice ball, that looks like a meat ball) beef, pumpkin, and lots of other delicious foods. Amanda's family also makes there own wine. She showed us these huge bottles and explained the process. They are half ba jiu and half grapes. Then I noticed something on the bottom of one and relized it was a sea horse. I told Joe he was drinking sea horse wine and he was like, well when in china, do as the chinese. Amanda said that this wine prevents cancer.
SO they laughed at us because we dont believe them that seahorse is a medicine.
They then invited us for dinner too, Her father really made way too much food. So later that evening we went back for meal #2. Everything was the same except we also had pig kidney. Mmmm everything I have always wanted. It's actually not that bad. With the sauce it is cooked in, its actually good. Her father continued to check to see if we could take the spicyness.I think both Joe and I have adaped. The kidney wasnt that spicy at all.
We then came home and ran for about twenty minutes around the track outside our apartment. Its funny to run at night in the pitch black here. There are many people and most of them are doing there evening exercises, usually walking. The best part is watching them walk backwards. Chinese believe , or so we are told, that it is good for your kidneys, well we have actually been told by two different sources that its either good for your kidneys or your heart. Both sources dont believe each other. Point is, its good for something, even if it might just be to make your butt look good ( this is my belief). Everyone is walking backwards in the pitch black. Its so crazy, it looks like a zombie movie where everyones head got turned around or something and they're all walking toward you!! Spooky!
Now we have decided to try and walk backwards a little too. We walk one time around the track after our run, backwards.

no footprints?, he walked backwards

I think I have died and gone to hell and the place is run by millions of chinese 12 year olds!!, but they have corn candy!

Well judging by the title you can guess it was a rough week. I think actually maybe it wasn't a rough week , but a rough last couple of days. In these last 2 days I had to teach my 4 junior classes. COming up with activities to keep them "engaged" is really hard. When does "engaged" turn into rules the classroom. My first two classes took every chance they got to scream at each other. I think they believe I can not hear them, or maybe one of their other teachers is deaf. Im not sure, but they scream at the top of their lungs when answering a question.
My first 3 classes were horrible. Then I came home and tried my best to hold it together. I talked it over with Joe and he gave me some good advice. For the last class I developed a 3 strikes your out rule. If I have to hush the class more then 3 times then I will make them read or do something boring. I tell the students this a they really do quiet down much faster. Right before I go to check the third strike they quickly shut there mouths. Its pretty cool.
I have also decided for the really bad classes I might keep them into there break period. This might be a little hard because I always have to teach another class, but I think I am willing to be a few minutes late to punish a bad class. Its pretty funny . I decided hey if they want to treat me like crap then They don't get to go to the bathroom. Ha ha

Well other then that.... We have been witnessing some pretty interesting things here.
The other day our main road was closed and there were millions of people just standing right in the middle of it.
We asked a student what this was and he translated , but in chinese the word for party and movement are the same. So either someone was having a giant street party or these people were protesting. We later asked another teacher and she confirmed that it was in fact a movement. I guess when I was a kid, or heck even up until I came here I never thought I would witness a movement here in a country like this. The topic up for protest was the water pollution. The movement was over in a few hours because the police came and the government informed the people that new chemistry had been created just to continue to treat the water. hmm right. Very interesting to witness something like this.
on the upside of things...... a math teacher invited everyone to his wedding and he showered everyones desks with candy. Some of the candy tastes normal. There's orange disks, grape disks, something that smells like peanut brittle, but tastes like air. Then there is the best one of all!!! Corn Candy. We are unsure if this is a creation to make kids eat there vegetables or just another whacky chinese thing. It actually tastes like corn on the cob! I'm not kidding!

It's a witch craft!

ok so joe got this letter last night from one of my students, but he thinks joe's name is Jone. He actually passed the note to another kid which went out to play basketball by our house and then got the to JOne, oh i mean joe. ha

He is my best junior student.The note is addressed like this: this letter for jone, its a note folded into fours and when you open the first fold it has these little pictures drawn on there. The first one is a little man with a claw, the next one is a huge smily face with big eyes and the third is a face with one eye and a question mark above his head. Bellow these drawings it says Bear?, Tiger? and then there is a scribbled out thing that says it's a man. but then he scribbled it out so it now says It's a witch craft!! WHat the hell does that mean??? ha ha haI love this kid he's the same kid that asked me in his last letter .. ps: I like pandas how bout you.
On the inside the note reads : I can't stand situation comedy. (what is that? any ideas?) He also thinks Man and Nature are interesting. Ok hmmm so if anyone has any ideas about either of these topics or what the possibly are , I would love to hear a comment. Otherwise I am going to continue to call Joe: Jone, for thr rest of our married life.

In ZhangJiaJie, I just remembered a funny fact.
We were climbing the stairs and the tour guide said about the mountains."Once an american came here and said that the air was so beautiful you would have to pay 5 dollars an hour in america to breathe it. " Then all the people around us looked at us and were like, is this true, would you really have to pay to breathe?? and they were serious.
We looked at them and emplained what sarcasim was.


Don't eat any meat!
With the water scare we had to ask a few questions.

dont eat the pork

Q: When can we cook with the water?
A: 8 days, do not eat the pork for 8 days either.
Q: what are the pigs drinking now within these 8 days?
A: 8 days, yes 8 days.
So from this we will not be eating the pork for a little while, much more then 8 days I think.

It is strange because now through out this whole thing the one thing that everyone still thinks is ok to eat is the fish.
What the heck, the one animal in the whole bunch that would be contaminated would be the fish, they swim in the water!
Oh well we will not eat the fish either.

We decided to just go into the city and stock up on meat at walmart, or in chinese wolma.
We took Larry with us to buy meat and he said that we will have enough meat until we go back to America. The chinese really don't eat too much meat and when they do its just for flavoring in a vegetable. (at least the people around us) so when he saw our meat he was really surprised. I wonder sometimes what he thinks of us and what we buy. He looked at me really funny when I found peanut butter and bought two jars of it. It is so strange for him.

I have been doing alot of thinking about the people here. I feel so happy to be here with them, excited to be helping them anyway I can, but I also can't help but feel a little sorry for the situations that go on here and the poor people that get into the mix of things. Mainly the water. All the unborn babies that are now harmed and espiecially for the poor people that cannot do anything about thier situation or even to buy the bottled water.
Things are pretty awful for them and you can't help notice it and wonder what you can do about it.

Zhang Jia Jie

Well we survived the last 5 days!! I can't believe it. Our school sent us on a little vacation. We traveled to the west of our province to a place called Zhong Jia Jie. It was amazing. Famous for its mountainous scenary ,Zhong Jia Jie is the most facinating natural attraction I have ever been to.
We started our journey at 6:30 am leaving our school by bus to Yue Yang city ( this is the closest city to us) this was half an hour. Then we arrived at got into a mans car that our headmaster knows, Honestly sometimes I feel like my life is a little like a mafia movie. People know people that know people. Then we were driven to the other bus station and took a bus all the way to Zhang Jia Jie. It was 6 hours! The was a little cramped, but we got to see a lot of the beautiful country side and the way the landscape can completly change in our province. We saw cotton fields and many people still working the fields by hand. Then near the houses they would lay out all the cotton and dry it. It was pretty amazing to see all the fluff balls all spread out. When we arrived we noticed many mountain ranges and a big city just underneath it all. This is Zhang Jia Jie. The next day we awoke and right away were rushed off to the first mountain. It took 1 and half hours up and about 1 hour down. They even have these men that have these bamboo carraiges and you can pay them 130 rmb to carry you up. We of course didnot do this because not only were the stairs very shady but the carraiges were also creeky. Then men carrying these things were also really old. I felt really bad for them. We had one guy in our group that kept paying for it. So we nicknamed him emperor.
It was beautiful. If you have ever seen those chinese movies like crouching tiger hidden dragon, you will know these mountains. You really know that your working it when your leg starts to tremble about half way down!

That night we went out on the town and went shopping. Fun for emily, not so fun for Joe. I bought a purse and ate some duck head. Oh yeah I said it Duck head. Our english teacher guide was buying one, and I decided that I would try one too. You have to eat a little meat off the beak and then the brain and the eye. I can tell you its defiently the most discusting thing I have ever eaten! I think I could do fear factor now.

The next day we traveled to another mountain called Tian Zi. These are many mountains all combined into a large national park. Some of these mountains are really little but very high and others are extremly large and very high. We rode a huge cable way all the way up , which while we were riding our guide told me that not too long ago a cable way at another mountain around here had broken down and 100 people died, ahhh could you please tell me this when I am not riding this thing! We arrived safely and were greated by the most amazing views. We then walked 2 hours back down the mountain range. I think this mountain is much taller because the steps were steaper and we had to walk 5 times up and 5 times down. Do a google search for images of Zhang Jia Jia. You will see some amazing landscapes. We are also adding pictures to our picture sight too.
After climbing the moutains the second day my legs defiently felt the pain. I couldnt really walk straight my legs were so used to walking down stairs.
It was beautiful!
Now we are back to our school and the water is said to be clean. Who knows for sure?
We were given 5 huge boxes of bottles of water from our school and we still have alot in our jug, so we should be fine for awhile. I think I will make rice from that for at least the next couple of weeks.
Today we buy a webcam!! hopefully if we can find one. I will let you know then you can see us via the internet.

 

We have some crazy bad news. Today is Saturday. We thought Ohh yes we can sleep in. At 6 in the morning we heard the usual morning exercise music being played on the loud speaker( in China the kids go to school on saturday, so this is usual), We fell back asleep, until we woke up again at 8 and relized it was the headmasters voice over the speaker. When a Headmaster's voice goes over the loud speaker it always sounds like he means buisness. Usually he will tell the students school news, but it is always at the end of the day. So we were alittle puzzled as to why he was talking this early in the morning. We decided well its not worth worrying about because its saturday, and we dont know chinese, so why worry. Then we were woken up again at the end of the headmasters speech by thousands of yelling kids. We then decided ok maybe its time to wake up!
Then we got a phone call. It was our foreign assistant who basically translated everything the headmaster said. She explained that the water in the river near our town is contaminated. They found traces of lead and mercury. So we are all not to drink or cook with the water. The headmaster has sent home all of the students and teachers and is saying we will have a break for 8 days! (explains the screaming kids)
Then minutes later we had 3 students knocking on our door. I found this weird because we have a huge security door downstairs that I wondered how they got through.
(later one of them showed me what he did. His arm is so skinny he can fit it through the bars and he opened it from the other side. ) We are so safe , right?? ha ha.
I told him, I hope thieves are not skinny like him. He just laughed and said he was sorry and that I should not worry because thieves dont come to school. Great! :)
I should explain that these kids have become our little tag alongs. Two of them are from my best junior class number 18. One of them, Jerry, wrote me a letter the first day of school that explained how old he was, that he loved english, wanted to know my thoughts on china, that he wanted me to come to his house and a ps that simply read I love pandas how about you.
The second is Jack, we gave him this name because he had no english name and jack seems to be a standard for a guy that you dont know. Joe is already taken or we would have used joe, so Jack it was. He is also in number 18. He is a lot more shy, but is excited to be around us and I think he knows more english then he speaks. Then there is Larry. We also gave him this name. He came to our apartment one night so nervous I thought he would wet his pants! He said in very broken english that he was in senior 3 ( thats the oldest class here, we dont teach in that grade because it is a grade that only has college review for the college enterance exam) He said he wanted to become better in english so he wanted to speak with us whenever he had time. We of course said yes. Then he said he wanted an english name. Larry is skinny and wears really stylish clothes, he looks like the famous chinese pop singer Jay chou sometimes I think. His hair is all styled so Joe decided he reminded him of a hawaiian college roommate he once had named Larry. Later that week we came home to the security door open, which we had closed and a post it note on our apartment door saying Hello my friends I came but you not here. Enjoy these good foods, signed Larry. He brought us pepsi and some really awesome chinese peanuts. He now also has a new email which is something like larry@ yahoo He loves his new name!
Anyways we are now calling them the stooges because we spent the day with them.
First Joe taught them american football outside. Then they taught Joe basketball. We then came inside and talked to Paul (joes brother) in america over skype, the internet phone. The stooges couldnt stop talking about it all day! Paul has a webcam so we could see him and my cat lou!! They loved it just as much as we did.
Larry cant wait to go to america and meet all of our familes.
We then went to the market and bought food that we thought we wouldnt need water for. We then came back and on the way saw Jerry's grandfather. A cute, nice, old man that looks like he could be from any chinese movie. We invited him for lunch too and headed home. Larry taught me to cook many chinese dishes after 2 hours in the kitchen we had a feast!
we feasted on tofu and pork, eggplant, carrots, etc. and all the boys drank a glass of milk. It was so cute!
The boys then spent the afternoon playing computer games and watching chinese tv, while speaking english. I can already tell the boys english is improving from the first day we met them. Wow what a day!
We are doing fine even with the water situation. We are thinking about traveling in these days ahead to see friends around our province. Dont worry we are fine! Just on Vacation.

Our classes


We now have finished our second week of teaching. Wow are we tired. We now teach 15 classes each ( 11 senior 1, and 4 junior classes each) I teach junior 2 and Joe teaches junior 3. I was a little nervous at first because Joe taught his junior class first and told me how much of a handle full they were. I thought, oh no, I am going to teach one year yourger then that!
It all turned out ok however. The juniors are just alittle louder and more active. The seniors are more mature and are eager to learn so they stay quiet when the need to be, but with the juniors its like pulling teeth to get them to stay quiet. I told my class one day that if they weren't quiet I would give them homework. Luckily they became quiet because I didnt know anything I could give them. I would feel bad anyway the kids here go to school until 9 :30 at night! So giving them extra homework sounds cruel. At least if they get noisey I can threaten it though :)
I played one game with all of my classes that I really loved! Its called who or what am I? I have one student come up and face the class. then I write a word behind them on the board. The class has to give the student clues to guess the english word. The kids love this game! It gets really loud with 65 screaming kids yelling out clues, so I had to quiet everyone down and say that people had to raise thier hands to give clues, I told them that the class next store would be "angry", which was a vocab word for this week. For the good classes I even let them write a word behind me and get me to guess the word. If anything they just love seeing there teacher try to guess at something and get it wrong. I had words written behind me all the way from "apple", "confident", and "handsome" to "Koby Bryant". Pretty hilarious when I had to guess that last one. They kept screaming Los angelos basketball player! Like I know, but somehow magically they said his name starts with a k and I guessed it! I even had one class that when the bell rang they wanted to keep playing. They screamed, "Please one more game!" I cherish those days because I know what I am doing here is not a waste of time for the students. In some classes I feel like I am just a babysitter for 45 minutes. I have to keep them quiet long enough to teach and then the class is over! But this was a good day and a good game. I saw that the students really did learn there words and it gave me satisfaction.

Oh yeah....
mexican tomato chicken lays potato chips taste like barbacue, As if mexican tomatos would taste different then chinese ones!
Tonight we had two of our chinese english teachers over for dinner. We made them Spagetti, we went to walmarts imported section and found Hunts tomato sauce, yep not the best , but what can you do? and some barilla pasta, both a splurge, because this stuff is imported here!

We bought a bunch of tomatos and garlic and green onions, and steak( they dont have ground beef here) and made it up for them. They said that they had it before in a westurn restraunt, but we tried that once here and it tastes like spegettio's so we told them this would be different.
It was so cute, they slurped every bite up, and both looked at each other and said I am full, but then said , but I must finish! They call it spelergetti. Its so cute! One of them all of a sudden asked, what kind of meat is this, we said beef, and she said oh no my doctor said not to eat beef! Then she kinda shrugged and thought, ahh this once, its too good, and continued eating. I never thought I would laugh so much. Its like being reintroduced to something you have known all your life. These girls decided they would try and make it for us next time.

Updates

1. If you want to test your chopstick skills, try picking up peanuts individually. Thats what they do in China. I think Joe and I have become pretty good at it actually. They fry all the peanuts themselves in salt and oil, then you have them in a little dish on the dinner table. They are good, but hard to pick up for the chopstick novice.

2. Joe is now the proud owner of a new watch. Bought on the street outside our school at a store that sells everything a chinese school boy or girl could want, at first glance it looks very mascaline, maybe even designer or something fancy. Then every 2.5 seconds the face of Hello Kitty appears!! Ahhh ha ha Joe says arggghhh Hello Kitty is for little girls!!! Arghhhh!
I think its funny, although now it has stopped giving good time, but hey it was only about 3 US dollars.

3. Fishing: We told a friend of ours here that we liked fishing. Next thing you know it she planned a fishing trip for us, where we left at 8 in the morning one sunday. Ahhh We teach on saturdays so sundays are our day to sleep in!! But we thought Buck up , cause its fishing and we are Minnesota folk, so a lake is where we wanna be!
We drove to this country farm house and there was this lake, or maybe I should say pond. We thought oh man we will be here all day and never catch a thing.
Then we threw out our line, which is only a stick attached to a string pretty much and threw it out there with a worm. Within 5 mins we got a cat fish, no joke!!!
We kept going back and forth and between the two of us we caught 5 fish!! Joe and Emily, the people that never catch anything!! The man said after someone translated "wow, your good at fishing" We told him, ahh not usually!
The other men that were with us were fishing for giant carp. We thought, uhhh I hope we dont eat that, but the carp are good in china I guess. When they fish for carp here, they have the same giant strick thing as we did, but they also have a huge rock attached to the string. So everytime they throw it in theres this huge splash! Then they set it down and wait for a tug.
When they caught the carp, I got a little scared. All of a sudden the stick tugged really hard, almost going into the pond, then the man picked up the stick and started to back up and drag it in. I thought he caught swamp thing, he was tugging so hard! Then another man reached in a got the giant fish. It was huge!
We then were asked to stay for lunch, which of course was fish soup, fryed fish and another fish dish. We also had pork and chicken. All the men of the fishing party, our friend Erin and I were seated at this round table, that was in what looked more like a barn then a dining room, but hey its country life.
Then the men started handing out beers as usual and they even gave us a rice wine that the farm owner makes himself. (I have to also say that the volunteer that was here before us could drink 20 beers, so they think Joe can do this too, he is american right?) So they refused to give up giving Joe the rice wine. We toasted which must have been 1,000 times. Joe looks at me and all of a sudden notices that there is a chicken that has wondered in the room. He now decides to coin the phrase, " theres a "f" in chicken behind you" as he chuckles. I think to myself oh man , how we gonna get him home. But luckily all the men stopped drinking when Joe could not finish his beer and made me finish it for him. They knew to stop then. Ha ha
anyways It was a great time, we actually ended up finding out the men that were fishing with us were 1. the man in charge of our electricity, 2. our landlord. 3. another headmaster from the school, 4. the schools accountant, 5. the farm owner. 6,7, and 8 I have no idea who they were or what they were doing there, but in China when you are cooking a big meal, you always share with your family and friends. so they couldve been anybody. Its nice to know who is taking care of our place though.
4. When chinese people say its going to get cold, believe them! It has been soooo hot all summer. We sweat every drop of water from our bodies most days. Someone said oh, yeah in 3 days it will be cold. We thought yeah right no way is it going to get too cold.
It has now been 5 days since then and now we are wearing sweaters! Crazy!!!

5. CCTV: Joe and I had our classes taped today. We are going to be on a television commericial for the school. A school having a foreign teacher is a big deal, so I guess we will be on chinese tv.
I will try and get a tape of it and show all of you.
It was serious buisness, there was a camera crew and they even had an interview session with some of the students about us.
I had to laugh, I have been sick the last few days so of course they tape me when my nose is red and I can barely talk because of a sore throat. Oh well Im on Chinese TV!!!!!

I spoke too soon! I guess next week we will teach 4 more classes each. so now we will each have 11 senior 1 and 4 junior 1 classes each. Man I thought we'd get off easy. We might also teach a teachers class too. Some of the teachers are eager to learn better pronunciation. We shall see, When in China do as the chinese. You never know what may change tommorow, so deal with it!

funny lays potato chip flavors in china
all of these bags have these english flavors written on the bag, next to a corresponding picture
1. Peking Duck= tastes like barbacue
2. Italian meat flavor= tastes like spicy peking duck or maybe spicy barbacue.
3.lemon cool = when it first enters your mouth you think mmm lemon squares, then after it is gone its cool mint flavor gives you good breathe. Very weird, but really good, cause it is like a desert chip, or least it tastes like one
4. Cucumber= actually tastes like cucumber! impossible I know!
5. Crispy chicken drumstick= tastes like peking duck flavor, no real difference
flavors not yet tried:
6.Mexican tomato chicken
7. Bejing duck.... hmm I wonder what the difference between peking and bejing duck will be? could it be that they also taste like barbacue? we shall see
there are more flavors too, we will keep you posted on them as we taste them.